Disclaimer-Still don't own Harry Potter
Thanks for reviewing everyone, sorry it took so long to update, I had writer's cramps with this story but I finally managed to type something up, it's quite heavy with dialogue so sorry if that bothers you, anyway hope you like it
Random fact about me: When I was younger I wanted to marry Alan Rickman… that voice just does things to me
Warning: Brief mentions of cancer
Chapter 36-A Death Eater's Past
When Hermione awoke on the morning of March the first, a lone tear fell down her cheek. She wiped it away and turned her head to the left. Severus was still asleep with his raven coloured hair contrasting sharply with the white pillow sheet. His hair was fanned around his head like a dark halo.
A few strands were draped across his porcelain face so Hermione gently brushed them away. The man looked so peaceful in his slumber and she didn't have the heart to wake him.
He had slept well that night with the Head Girl by his side but for the first time, Hermione had not drawn comfort from the presence of the Potions Master. Last night, the nightmares had attacked her mind and they lingered around her still.
Slipping carefully out of the bed, Hermione moved to perch herself on the window sill. It seemed a pleasant day. The sky was blue with fluffy looking clouds and a glimmer of golden sun. The dancing leaves also suggested a gentle wind.
Despite the beauty offered to her from the view of the window, Hermione felt another tear slip down her cheek that was soon joined by another, then another, then another and then countless more.
Had he still been alive, Ron would be celebrating his eighteenth birthday.
Turning her eyes away from the scenery of the school grounds, Hermione transformed into Katrina and left Severus to continue sleeping.
She ran through the castle corridors and up to Gryffindor tower. Standing in her human form, she gave the Fat Lady the password before stepping through the portrait hole and making her way up to the 7th year boys' dormitory.
Neville was snoring softly, Seamus was mumbling Irish words that Hermione did not understand and Dean had his feet tucked under his pillow and his head poking out from under the quilt down the bottom of the mattress.
Harry was awake, as was Ginny. The two of them were sitting in Ron's old bed with the quilt pulled up to their chins. They exchanged a sad smile with Hermione before moving the quilt aside so that she could climb in beside them.
She rested her head on Harry's shoulder and inhaled the smell of the quilt covers before letting out a sad sigh. They didn't smell like Ron anymore. His scent was gone, just like he was gone.
To Hermione, it felt like she was losing Ron all over again, like he had died in her arms just moments ago rather than months. She wondered how Ginny and the rest of the Weasley's must be feeling. Did Ron's death hurt them more than it hurt Harry and herself or was their pain equal?
"He'd be tearing the wrapping paper off his presents right now." Harry commented. "Then he'd be stuffing chocolate frogs in his mouth along with any other food he could find."
"Mum always used to bake him a birthday cake." Ginny said. "Every year she'd send one. A sponge cake with cream and jam in the middle and melted chocolate on top. He used to love mum's birthday cakes. He'd never let the twins have any but he always saved me the last slice."
"I still miss him so much." Hermione told them. "I thought… I thought maybe the pain would lessen. I thought his loss wouldn't hurt forever, but my heart still aches, every single second. When people say things will get better in time, or that everything's going to be ok, they're just lying. I don't think it ever gets better, that it ever stops hurting."
"It won't feel like this forever." Harry replied as he squeezed her shoulder. "When Cedric died, it was horrible. I had so many nightmares. Then I lost Sirius, that was even worse and then… then I lost Ron. It hurts like hell but I know I've still got more people to lose. We all die eventually, that's the one thing we all have in common. It won't hurt this bad forever. Things will get easier."
"Why do people have to die?" Ginny asked and as Hermione looked over at the younger girl she found that she looked less like the teenage Ginny and more like the eleven year old she had been when she first came to Hogwarts.
"That's the way the world is Gin." Harry answered. "We all have to die someday, it's cruel but it's true."
"No it's not." Hermione disagreed and the other two looked at her. "Life is cruel, not death. Death is a kindness."
"Mione, don't talk like that." Harry told her. "It scares me."
"I'm not suicidal if that's what you're thinking." Hermione replied. "I just feel as though life is a chore. So many awful things happen, it's exhausting. I'm so tired of crying."
"So smile." Harry suggested.
"I'm not sure I remember how." Hermione answered.
"Not everything in life is bad." Ginny spoke up. "It might feel like that, especially on days like this, but there are good things too. The happier things are just harder to remember sometimes. But you have Snape and you love each other right?"
"I don't know anymore." Hermione sighed. "I've told him I love him but he's never said it back. I hardly even know the man. When I try and talk to him about personal things he shuts down. Sometimes I feel like he's a total stranger but at the same time… I know that I love him. I'm just not sure if he loves me too."
"Of course he does." Harry told her. "He'd be crazy not to."
"Love doesn't always have to be shown through words you know." Ginny said. "Sometimes actions speak louder than words."
Hermione thought over what her two friends had said and the three of them sat silently for a while. The silence was disturbed however when Seamus sat up muttering something about a leprechaun.
The Irishman looked over at the three of them. He furrowed his brow in confusion wondering what they were all doing in the same bed. After a few minutes of awkward silence, Seamus realised what day it was and his normally cheerful face morphed into one of sympathy and unease.
"Um… good morning?" Seamus tried not really sure what he should do or say.
"Morning mate." Harry replied quietly as he hugged the girls tighter to his chest.
Ordinarily, Seamus would have made some lewd comment about Harry having two girls snuggled up to him but that morning was clearly not one for Irish humour. He smiled tentatively at the three before heading to the bathroom taking longer with his morning routine than usual.
Not long after, Dean and Neville woke up. They two found the atmosphere uncomfortable and after offering the three their sympathy they left the dormitory.
It was a weekend so there were no lessons that day. This allowed the three of them to simply stay in Ron's bed talking about fond memories of the lanky redhead.
The other Gryffindor boys respectfully kept out of their way although Neville did return at lunch and dinner time insisting that the three eat something. They called upon Dobby the house-elf who showed up wearing Ron's maroon jumper and one of his maroon socks mismatched with a mustard coloured sock that had once belonged to Harry's Uncle Vernon.
When Hermione eventually left the dormitory, she transfigured into her cat form and headed down to the Shrieking Shack. To her surprise, when she entered the bedroom, she spied a raven perched upon the bed.
The birds eyes focused on the cat intently and a soft squawk emitted from the ravens beak. The feline purred in response before leaping onto the bed and curling up. The feathered creature nipped gently on the corner of the cat's ear before growing into the form of a man.
Severus positioned himself on his back with his head on the pillow and gathered Katrina onto his chest. He stroked her sleek black fur earning himself a grateful mewl.
"Silly Kat." Severus whispered affectionately.
He traced a finger over the brown wisps on Katrina's head causing the animagus' whiskers to quiver.
"I know that you've been coming here." Severus said matter of factly. "What I don't understand is why. Do you come out here to hide? Tell me."
Katrina meowed in response causing the Potions Master to scowl slightly.
"Miss Granger, I refuse to have a one-sided conversation with a cat." He droned. "So would you kindly return to your regular form so we can have a proper conversation like two mature adults?"
She didn't want to change. She liked being in her cat form. Everything felt easier that way.
"Hermione." Severus said, a small bite to his tone. "If you don't change back of your own accord I will force you to." He threatened as he pulled his wand from the pocket of his robes.
With a roll of her cat eyes, Katrina morphed into Hermione. She rolled off of Severus' chest to rest comfortably by his side. He circled an arm around her shoulders and fiddled with a curl of her hair, something he often did recently.
"Why do you come here?" He asked her with a gentleness few people knew him to be capable of.
"I like it here." Hermione replied with a shrug. "When I'm down here, I can almost forget about everything going on up there. I can forget about the pressure of my N.E., all the reports in the Prophet about death eater activity, the war, the prophecy and Harry's involvement in it, Grandpa, Ron… none of that seems to matter when I'm alone down here. And when I'm Katrina, it doesn't hurt as much but…"
"But?" Severus pressed arching an eyebrow.
"When I come back up, when I'm me again, the hurt just intensifies." Hermione answered.
"Then perhaps it would be beneficial for your emotional well-being if you stopped coming down here." Severus suggested.
"But when I'm here it's peaceful for a while." Hermione replied. "Then when the pain returns, it reminds me I'm still real. It's worth it… I think."
"You don't need to hide down here Hermione." Severus told her. "You should come to me."
"Why?" Hermione asked in a tone of confusion, not cruelty. "You don't come to me with your problems. You just pretend they aren't there. Why can't I do the same?"
"Because I can't stand the thought of losing you." Severus replied. "I always viewed emotions as a sign of weakness. For that reason, I never let anybody get too close to me; I always held them at a distance. I believed that if I didn't let people in, if I didn't allow myself to open my heart to others, that it would be less painful when circumstances stole them from me."
"Did it work?" Hermione asked.
"No." He answered. "I couldn't even close off from people properly. I fooled others into believing that I didn't care, but in truth I still cared for a select few very deeply. Losing them tore me up inside, I just never allowed people to see my wounds. But there were times when I feared that I really would stop caring, that I would lose myself."
"I don't understand." Hermione admitted as she rolled Severus' shirt sleeve back and traced the tattoo that marred his ivory skin. The first few times she had dared to do such a thing, Severus had tensed up and the vein in his temple had throbbed as it did when he was angry, but as she ran her finger over the dark-mark now his muscles did not tense. The only change was the blanket of goose bumps that appeared on his arm.
"In my school years, I used to be close friends with Lily Evans."
"Harry's mother." Hermione stated and she felt him nod.
"She was the very first friend I ever made." Severus revealed.
"Did you ever… have feelings for her?" Hermione asked with just a touch of envy entering her voice.
"Not of the romantic sort." Severus assured her. "I only ever viewed her as a friend. But in our fifth year, I pulled away from her. Potter and Black made my school years Hell. Back then, Lily was one of the few good things in my life."
"So why did you pull away from her?" Hermione enquired.
"The Slytherins also gave me a hard time for being friends with her." Severus explained. "Because she was a Gryffindor and a muggle-born. One day, I came across Black arguing with Black in an empty classroom."
"What?" Hermione asked.
"Sirius and Bellatrix then." Severus said to make things simpler to understand. "The crazy witch was yelling about how the mangy mutt was dishonouring the family name and such. She also worked in a few insults about a muggle-born girl that he was dating at the time. He always had a short temper so of course he reacted badly. Then she laughed at him with that skin-curling cackle of hers and said that his problem was that he cared too much. She said that his feelings clouded his judgement and that if he thought more with his head and less with his heart then perhaps he could have made his father proud. Those words, though not directed at me, really created a sting."
"Is that how you felt about your father?" Hermione questioned gently. "That you didn't make him proud?"
"I know I didn't make him proud." Severus replied bitterly. "Black… Sirius, couldn't care less what his parents thought, but I did. Despite how much I loathed my father, I still wanted to earn his respect and have him love me but I knew it would never happen. I decided then that I needed to be more like Bellatrix and stop caring about people. Of course, Lily would realise something was wrong and she would have tried to make things better. But I didn't want her to. I didn't want to feel anymore but if she was my friend that would not be possible. So I had to make her hate me. I called her a mudblood, one of the few things that really upset her. I still see the look on her face."
"I'm sorry." Hermione mumbled not knowing what else to say. She recalled the first time she had been called a mudblood, it hadn't been pleasant. Although the term didn't bother her anymore she could imagine how hearing that insult from a friend must hurt. "So after you withdrew from Lily, what happened?"
"For a while, I almost stopped caring." Severus said. "But that year I lost my mother. She had cancer, leukaemia."
"I'm sorry." Hermione said again cuddling closer to the older man.
"When I lost her, all the emotions I'd been refusing to feel attacked me full-force." Severus told her. "By this time, I had already taught myself the art of animagi. I was permitted to leave school grounds and attend her funeral. When I returned that evening I went up to the Astronomy tower. I was standing by the ledge thinking about transforming and flying away when Regulus Black showed up. He had heard about my mother and when he saw me by the edge of the tower he thought I was trying to commit suicide and he tried to stop me even though I didn't need to be stopped. After that, we became friends. Best friends. I allowed myself to feel again."
"Then what happened?" Hermione asked.
"After leaving school the two of us became death eaters." Severus answered shamefully. "It was my idea. I'd had a huge fight with my father and I was so angry. He'd caught me crying over an old photograph of my mother. He told me I was weak, pathetic. Then he carried on saying how I was a waste of space and that being a wizard was useless. He told me that he wished it was me who had died." He took a breath before continuing. "Regulus and I joined the death eaters and the first thing I did was murder my own father. Not because the Dark Lord had ordered me to, simply because I wanted to. Until then, I'd never performed magic in front of him. Even my mother hadn't used it around him when she was alive. But I showed him what a wizard could do that night. I tortured him for hours. He cried and begged for me to stop but I didn't listen. I just laughed in his face and told him that he was the weak one. Then I killed him and I didn't feel guilty, not even for a second. It felt good."
Hermione chewed her lower lip and pulled her eyes away from Severus' face. She felt sick. Although she knew that Severus had once been a death eater, and she had long accepted that he must have carried out some heinous deeds, nothing could have prepared her for what she was now hearing.
The eyes that she loved to stare into, the lips she loved to kiss, the long fingers that felt so good when they touched her skin, they all belonged to a man who had not only murdered his own father, but he'd enjoyed it too.
"What happened after that?" Hermione forced herself to ask though she still didn't turn back to look at the man's face. Although she didn't want to hear what he would say, she knew that she had to. She had to hear this, all of it.
"The Dark Arts have always fascinated me." Severus continued. "To begin with, my fascination came from my thirst for knowledge, but after murdering my father… I became obsessed with power. All my life, I had felt weak and powerless. I was bullied by my peers, sneered at by my father; I'd never been in control. Then for the first time I felt powerful. It was like a drug. However, Regulus didn't take to being a death eater the way I did. He tried to run away. He didn't get very far. He was found and dragged back to the Dark Lord. When they forced him into the room, he looked so much like his brother… all Gryffindorish. He knew he was going to die in that room but he wasn't scared."
"Voldemort killed him?" Hermione guessed.
"No, he made me do it." Severus told her and she finally turned back to look at him. "After that… the nightmares started. I started to feel again. Guilt, self-hatred. It was then that I went to Albus seeking help. You see Hermione, emotions are not a weakness, they are a sign of strength. If I hadn't forced myself to stop feeling, I'd have stayed friends with Lily and she'd never have let me become a death eater. And if I hadn't have started feeling again, I'd have lost myself forever, I'd never have found you and I'd be… I'd be just like the Dark Lord. I don't ever want you to go through anything like that. Don't try to run away from your emotions Hermione, ever."
Hermione took a deep breath and moved so she was sitting on the bed with her feet on the floor. She closed her eyes and massaged her temples thinking over all the information she had just received.
"Is there anything else I should know about your past?" She asked as he moved so he was sitting too.
"I believe that is all you need to know." Severus answered. "And now that you do know… do you still love me?"
To Be Continued
Please Review
Love and Hugs, IceQueenRia xxx